Under dark skies

I’ve chickened out after reading weather forecast for Saturday - deep low pressure system moves over us from Norway, SMHI and meteo.pl showing heavy wind and lots of rain, warnings issued for Ålands sea. I turned down Marek who wanted to sail with his son on Meritaten - with such weather it would not be fun.

It turned out that there was only little rain, indeed quite strong wind and beautiful weather! I went to Stockholm to see a similar boat for sale - but requiring total renovation - so I did not sail. And regretted that!

Today the forecast was showing cloudy sky, some rain and no wind. In the afternoon I went to harbour anyway - apparently our Bay of Squalls, as I call Norrtäljeviken, somehow slips outside the forecast. There was wind and there was lots of it! Weather looked like it would rain but I wanted to sail today so I quickly rigged the boat and cast off at 15:30.

I considered shortening the mainsail but after a while I’ve decided that we go under full mainsail and reduced genua instead: the wind was coming directly from East so to move into the Bay we had to beat all the time against the wind.

After passing Harkön I entered wider water, enabling me some exercises in storm tactics: heaving-to. After some sail and rudder adjustments I could pretty quickly stop the boat on the open water. Virtues of the full-length keel of traditional boat!

We continued then a bit further into the Bay, close hauled, at speeds ranging around 4 knots. Sea was covered with wind but Meritaten glided through nicely and securely.

After 1,5h of closed-hauled pleasures I decided to head back home - my girls promised to pick me from the harbour after 17:00. The way back was a pure leisure - on a broad reach, suddenly soundless as we were running with the wind - I was enjoying calmness of the situation, contrary to the darkening skies around.

Unrolled genua, set on butterfly-mode with the main sail. We were the only sailboat within sight.

Sun was already low and managed to give us a kiss through a sudden opening in cloudy sky.

At 17:30 we were back in the berth and while I was preparing the boat for the night I noted that weather started to quickly deteriorate. Shortly after my girls picked me from the harbour it started to rain. Nice timing indeed.